Make Your Ecommerce Site Mobile & Desktop Friendly

October 7, 2018

Chauncey: Welcome to the Being Found Show. We’re going to talk about streamlining the checkout process. For those of you that aren’t selling things online, a lot of these attitudes can be applied to your contact form conversion or even making a phone call. When somebody comes to your site, they expect things to move quickly and smoothly. A lot of business owners, even though they deal with the online world, get very frustrated with the internet and are more than happy to throw up their hands and walk away. You know if we lived in a world where online purchasing was just super easy, very cheap, and fast chances are all brick and mortar would close. You know which is maybe a scary thought for the future. Once again we’re not here necessarily to talk about the future or what we think should happen, we’re talking about getting you a successful business today. And to have a successful business today, you need to streamline your checkout process.

Be clear and Upfront With Your Checkout Process

Now 28% of us online shoppers have abandoned an order in the past quarter solely due to a too long complicated checkout process. (Global E-commerce Trends and Statistics [2017-2018]) That might be confusing for some people who are listening but too long of a check out process can mean a lot of things. It could mean that your page loads too slowly, that they’re collecting too much information, that they can’t navigate or figure it out, or that it’s not obvious where the information goes. This is a big sort of bag of snakes as the testing is concerned because there’s a lot of things that might have gone into this and you may not know where to start. But I assume that if something is too complicated for you, you’re just out. I do too. I know I’m incredibly impatient. My entire family will vouch for that. I am the world’s most impatient man and if I’m frustrated with something I’m out. I’m even a technological guy, and I’m out.

Jake: It’s almost like when you begin shopping you have an expectation of whatever it is you’re buying and how complicated you expect it will be. If you are buying a pair of shoe, you put in your credit card number, your name, the CVC code on the back and the date. That’s it. That’s all you really want to do, and I think a lot of people are trying to move in the direction of the most frictionless field possible or make the checkout process as easy as possible.

Chauncey: The shoes are a great example because the only thing that should be complicated about buying shoes is figuring out the stupid sizing chart. Once you’ve got that figured out you put in your size, your color, the style and then pay for it and it is all said and done. But is it ever really like that? No, and a lot of people try to upscale you, and that becomes confusing. Go Daddy is a prime example for this. I’m always going to buy a domain name, and once I enter the name, it has everything ready for me, the price up front, the details and everything and I just have to click purchase. I have a lot of impulse domain buys.

Jake: Chaunceyisthebest.com is in your cart.

Chauncey: Yes exactly. So I put it in the cart and then all of a sudden it automatically gives me five years with some sort of security and the “continue to the cart” is like hidden over on the side. They’re trying to sort of trick me into making that purchase. And if I was a noob, I really might end up spending 100 bucks when I went in to spend 10. I find it to be very tricky and frankly, I find it to be a little unethical. You need to be clear and upfront with your checkout process.

Jake: I feel like this is a great time to interject. There’s a lot of great programs out there that have pre-built check out processes that are noncomplicated. The one I’m thinking of right now is Shopify. Shopify is a website building program, and it was designed to sell products online. So you know they do a very good job of making that process very streamlined. You pay for it, but it’s a great program and worth exploring if you’re selling products online.

Chauncey: For somebody who’s working your site for you, I find WooCommerce’s checkout process to be very easy. Although working the program might be a little bit complicated. You know they really haven’t created an online product selling platform that’s hugely easy for the owner. When putting in those products and organizing those products, it can still be a little less cumbersome. But anybody who sells products online knows that and Shopify actually will pump out to other platforms like eBay and Amazon. It covers a lot of programs.

Your Site Needs To Be Mobile Responsive

Now, of course, this is something that should be done year round. These are things that need to be done because we see how high the reward is and through the holidays you really need to have this done, or you’re going to be missing out on the big bucks. It is difficult on the desktop to navigate a site, and it is even more difficult on the phone considering tiny product images.

Jake: I just always expect that if you’re browsing on your phone, you expect small product images. But I guess some people don’t.

Chauncey: When I’m styling a site I try to blow out images all the way because I know that’s the first thing I want to see. For one, they want to know where they’re at. They want to click the button and know they are on the right product because the title is bigger than the image. I’m sure it’s good sales conversion as long as you take good pictures. You get that first one on here. Difficult navigation is a touch issue to combat on the mobile platform, and a lot of people haven’t. Lots of people get weirded out by the hamburger. I don’t know what you call the three lines that open up the menu for you, but a little industry joke term for it is the hamburger. Once you’re aware it’s there, it’s maybe a little easier to navigate.

Jake: People are still learning. I mean it’s almost like one of those things that people just get used to. You see the three lines, and you know it opens the menu.

Chauncey: But I bet you another issue with the navigation is navigating the checkout process. You should not only have your main navigation for the site, but also for your checkout process. During the checkout process, you might want to get back out to the shoes and if you do, how do you get back to your cart? Your little cart icon is hidden up there at the top. What I tend to do is if you have items in the cart, at the top of the page beneath the header I’ll put like a big green bar that says you have this in your cart and it stays with you everywhere you go on the site and takes you back to your cart.

This always makes me think of my dad. My dad was technologically advanced for his time. He was born in 1936 so right out of college he was actually doing computer programming for the Rand Corporation because of his math skills. So by the time my dad gets a cell phone, I don’t know if he had like freaky sausage fingers or what, every call he made before anyone said a word you heard a bunch of beeping at the start and then he would clear his throat and then start the call. He just couldn’t really get down the motor skills to hit the ball very well. So I understand that pain point.

Take the time to make the shopping experience for your consumers quick, easy, and painless because if you don’t, you are losing their purchase and handing it over to your competitor. Thank you for listening to this segment of the Being Found Show, to hear the full show listen here: Being Found Show Episode #61 or subscribe to our Podcast.

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The internet has changed marketing and sales forever! I’m here to make sense of this chaos. I want companies to feel confident in their marketing. To be confident, businesses have to know what has changed, what has stayed the same, and what they can do about it.